publications//papers by Francesca Murialdo
From Architecture to Community: Adaptive Reuse as Social Practice, 2023
This paper brings forward the idea of adaptive reuse as a social practice able to reconnect urban... more This paper brings forward the idea of adaptive reuse as a social practice able to reconnect urban communities, and actively contribute towards their consolidation. Further, it demonstrates how skills and competences from the academic realm can facilitate community engagement and (re)engender a sense of belonging. Adaptive reuse, intended as a series of actions and processes to transform existing buildings into different ones 'fit' for new purposes, is a practice that has become the focus of discourse around architectural heritage, sustainability and the future of our cities. The central idea of the discipline is to reprogramme existing buildings through a set of tools and tactics able to modify structure and matter. However, it is our contention that the remit of the discipline has evolved, emphasising the notion that buildings are symbolic entities-"memory spaces" and "cultural experiences" able to actively contribute towards the building of communities. Looking to the principles of maintenance and care that adaptive reuse embodies, we propose an interpretation of reuse, that considers how people interact and identify with places, rather than focusing on function or mode of inhabitation. Consequently, the process of reactivating/re-using architecture situated within the public realm, can be framed as a social practice. As Spatial Designers we work on projects focused on establishing a dialogue with the community as both an idea and a real entity, identifying practices of engagement, gaining trust and exercising empathy. Working in contexts where communities are sometimes fragmented and not readily able to build a dialogue-a situation exacerbated by covid and the current cost of living crisis in the UK, our role is to support and enable a process of envisioning. Spatial adaptive practices-by embedding principles of maintenance and care-become an effective strategy for actively engaging with the complex and often conflicting needs of diverse communities and neighbourhoods. The contribution to the Handle with care/Inclusivity track is enriched by the account of KilburnLab, a practice-based research project led by the Interiors Team at Middlesex University in London, comprising a series of collaborative activities with local stakeholders exploring the future of the area. The Kilburn Lab project is part of a wider strategy for reframing adaptive reuse as a social practice that transposes the principles of 'care', that are evident in its processes and tactics, to urban regeneration. Buildings, and more generally existing spaces, are custodians of memory, history and legacy.
One Kilburn: Imagining the Future of Kilburn [Exhibition and workshop]
The exhibition took place at the Kiln Theatre as part of the One Kilburn: Imagining the Future of... more The exhibition took place at the Kiln Theatre as part of the One Kilburn: Imagining the Future of Kilburn event. Its main purpose was to display the projects created by students, which centred around the future of Kilburn High Road and the abandoned Community Center at 107 Kingsgate Road and prompt community engagement and discussion.
A community engagement workshop was conducted, fousing of four key questions aimed at exploring significant issues in the area: "What makes Kilburn special?", "What is the vision of Kilburn?", "What can we do now?", and "What can we do in the future?". The workshop gathered valuable feedback from participants, which the students then utilized to inform the development of their projects and that will inform future events for Kilburn Lab
A Focus on Pedagogy: Teaching, Learning and Research in the Modern Academy
Within the disciplines of Interior Architecture and Design, visual depiction of spaces is a power... more Within the disciplines of Interior Architecture and Design, visual depiction of spaces is a powerful tool to communicate use, users and qualities of the designed/proposed spaces. With a mixture of techniques we can produce images capable of plunging viewers directly into these imagined spaces. Such visualisations, so provocative and seductive, are carefully designed to communicate the atmosphere that the designer is aiming to create, but if they fail to include a fair representation of the people those spaces are designed for, they misrepresent the aim of the project. This distinct lack of diversity and inclusivity within visuals is indicative of both a lack of consideration of the existence of people who are not the same as the designers themselves and an equally problematic lack of understanding of the needs of these populations. As educators, we aim to foster a global spatial‐narrative dimension for interiors, which allows a wider social, political and economic context to emerge.
This project is a collaboration between academics from Lincoln’s School of Psychology, the Interiors programmes at University of Lincoln and Interior Architecture at Middlesex Univrsity, and the Academic Writing and Language team at Middlesex.
Developing a series of targeted and inter-disciplinary workshops to ensure that designers and educators are equipped with the knowledge they need to deliver presentations and discuss unconscious bias in representation as well as other relevant considerations when engaging in inclusive design. The workshops have promoted a discussion across education and industry of the impact that visualization has on the representation of future spaces and whom these spaces are addressed and designed for: a discourse about social sustainability of spatial design. We intend our workshops to help establish EDI as an integral part of the design process and enable participants to apply their own critically reflective knowledge and understanding of these principles to the development of their design.
A Focus on Pedagogy: Teaching, Learning and Research in the Modern Academy, 2022
‘In mixed reality environments, where the physical and virtual merge, every object has the potent... more ‘In mixed reality environments, where the physical and virtual merge, every object has the potential to be smart. Every fitting, button, handle, knob, moulding, cornice, ledge has the potential to become a switch, gate, window, link to worlds beyond that in which they materially exist.’
A physical and pedagogical entity, the design studio embraces and fosters collaboration beyond its physical borders, however the move to online teaching and learning during the Covid-19 pandemic presented significant challenges to the delivery of architecture and design education, especially in terms of transposing the ‘studio’ environment – it’s ‘signature pedagogy’ - to a virtual alternative. Prompting a deep reflection on and rethinking of teaching and learning within this context, it is our contention that this experience deserves a new empirical framework able to challenge existing pedagogic practices that are fundamentally resistant to change.
Reviewing a year in the life of the BA (Hons) Interior Architecture programme at Middlesex University in London, we explore the use of digital platforms as an emergent spatial typology, investigating pedagogical engagement in a digitally networked learning environment. Articulating a future scenario where the design studio will exist as a mixed reality entity, we propose the “Augmented Studio”, as an emerging pedagogic landscape within which we prepare, shape, and equip teaching and learning moving forward. What precedents exist for this augmented environment? How might these inform the evolution of a new pedagogic framework for spatial design education and how might future pedagogy continue to be shaped by digital-era technologies?
Draft 06, 2020
A collection of ideas, processes and projects
Interior Architecture & Design Middlesex University
Cultural, Theoretical, and Innovative Approaches to Contemporary Interior Design, 2020
The change in the significance of goods is a process that, ever since the end of the Industrial R... more The change in the significance of goods is a process that, ever since the end of the Industrial Revolution, has triggered far-reaching changes in society as the term has lost any meaning in relation to its purely
functional character and increasingly come to represent symbolic and cultural contents. “Practice of Consumption and Spaces for Goods” has the aim to investigate contemporary retail spaces as complex places combining many aspects that go beyond the spatial and functional to include the physical, social,cultural, and economic.
Interior Futures, 2019
The spaces of the contemporary city are identified by a ‘permeability gradient ’ with what seems ... more The spaces of the contemporary city are identified by a ‘permeability gradient ’ with what seems to be a continuous interior. These internal spaces we inhabit in various ways, either public or private, are capable of generating quality: interiors are not enclosed but intimate, mysterious, unexpected. What happens when these spaces are mapped, coded and reviewed? This article explores the relationship between the reality and representation of interiors as offered by online platforms like Airbnb.
IE:STUDIO|The Hidden Interior, 2019
Interiors – both public and private – can be invisible to the eye, hidden from view for many reas... more Interiors – both public and private – can be invisible to the eye, hidden from view for many reasons, either by chance or as a deliberate act of concealment. There are interiors that are lost - invisible because they no longer exist in a physical form; erased, all traces of inhabitation removed; or forgotten, lacking a way of voicing their material and immaterial value. Others are shielded from public view because they are buried beneath the surface, sealed off, or locked in - too sensitive, important or fragile for inhabitation. Further there are also some typologies of building that negate the essence of the interior – that is, the capacity to allow exchange between people and space.
Issue #4 of IE:Studio explores the range of interpretations that emerge from the investigation of these hidden, invisible and erased spaces. Today digital technologies provide us with pseudo surgical tools through which to record, document, extract and reproduce interiors that are threatened, hidden or concealed, but what tactics and tools can we adopt to take apart, read and interpret the multiple layers of memory and matter that are embedded within the fabric of the interior? What happens when we encounter content and data that poses ethical and political questions? And in the uncovering of such interiors are we aestheticising trauma rather than simply unpicking the truth? Can the increased scrutiny of what lies beneath the surface of the interior give spaces their own agency beyond human inhabitation?
This issue offers a diverse collection of essays and studio briefs that question and expose a range of positions in relation to lost and hidden interiors, and what happens when these spaces are restored to the public gaze, literally and/or metaphorically. The eleven papers included here are organised into three sections: Studio, Research and Practice, and have been curated under five headings: #negated, #forgotten, #concealed, #erased and #lost that identify different typologies of the hidden interior as well as varying strategies of engagement. The three different sections - Studio, Research, Practice – provide a useful framework for how Research and Practice in Interiors informs Studio briefs. The wide range of contributors including academics, researchers, students and practitioners together underline the collaborative nature of interiors as a discipline.
Draft Magazine05, 2019
A collection of ideas, processes and projects Interior Architecture & Design Middlesex University
We create interiors everyday, either speculative when we work with our students or real, in
pract... more We create interiors everyday, either speculative when we work with our students or real, in
practice. We observe, decode the existing, anticipate what might be possible and then
construct new layers of meaning. Yet far from being just a material translation of our living
needs, interiors are guardians of stories, memories and relationships.
More often than not interiors, if not the architecture that frames them are altered, hidden,
closed off – they become invisible, subtracted from our vision and perception. In this paper
we are interested in these hidden and erased spaces, and the processes of disentanglement
that can assert the agency of the interior within an investigative practice.
Firstly we will establish the contexts for this discussion, setting out our theoretical position,
and introducing the metaphor of the palimpsest and the concept of the gaze to underpin our
approach. Further we will look at existing practices for documenting and interpreting hidden
and concealed spaces and events.
Then we will address the opportunities offered by digital technologies that can make visible
the complexity of interior environments, and enable us to imagine and explore new
configurations and future possibilities for these ‘lost’ spaces.
Harris, H., Brooker, G., Walker, K., Dillon, J. M., Matz, C. A., Future of Interiors, in progress
The spaces of the contemporary city are identified by a permeability gradient with what seems to ... more The spaces of the contemporary city are identified by a permeability gradient with what seems to be a continuous interior. These internal spaces we inhabit in various ways, either public or private, are capable of generating quality: interiors are not enclosed but intimate, mysterious, unexpected.
What happens when these spaces are mapped, coded and reviewed?
This article explores the relationship between the reality and the representation of interiors as offered by some online platforms, like Airbnb.
Design innovations for contemporary interiors and civic art / Luciano Crespi, editor.
Interiors, intended as the discipline able to build (not only) physical connections in between sp... more Interiors, intended as the discipline able to build (not only) physical connections in between spaces, people and objects, has deeply changed in the last decades, assuming new roles and aims. Both theory and practice, thanks to its continuous updating, have being able to generate innovative and collaborative insight and solutions, moving fast towards new contents, new tools and different strategies focused on the contemporaneity. In this framework, retail design, both in research and profession, is particularly interesting as an expression of this disciplinary shift, with an approach characterized by multidiscipli-narity, experimentation and a strong relational dimension. The change in the significance of goods is a process that, ever since the end of the Industrial Revolution, has triggered far-reaching changes in society as the term has lost any meaning in relation to its purely functional character and increasingly come to represent symbolic and cultural contents. " Practice of Consumption and Spaces for Goods " has the aim to investigate contemporary retail spaces as complex places combining many aspects that go beyond the spatial and functional to include the physical, social, cultural and economic.
Reuse, in its different forms and meanings, is one of the crucial topics currently being explored... more Reuse, in its different forms and meanings, is one of the crucial topics currently being explored from a cross-disciplinary perspective. This paper, considering the status of the speculation on the topic, introduces the concept of adaptive reuse as a time-specific strategy for keeping the building active, both from a material and immaterial point of view,
mediating the relationship with the past and its different layered meanings. The conceptual framework is built around the idea that the built environment is always time-specific; it is planned and realised according to specific needs in a specific timeframe. In this perspective,
every further adaptation is meant to keep the architecture updated to be suitable for the new timeframe: adaptive reuse is intended as a process that uses different tools and tactics to keep the buildings active.
Reused buildings merge the values of the original construction and of subsequent adaptations.
The evaluation of the adaptive reuse process relates to the capacity to add a new layer of sense to the existing significance and to the quality of reusability that the intervention achieves.
This article explores the topic of hospitality and hospitable spaces, integrating perspectives fr... more This article explores the topic of hospitality and hospitable spaces, integrating perspectives from the fields of Interior Architecture and Academic Writing to respond to the learning experiences and the spatial and emotional needs of student and staff writers at Middlesex University (MDXU). The genesis of the idea was provoked by different ongoing conversations in our academic community regarding how to best engage students around the topic of shared campus space as well as how to encourage the visibility and appreciation of writing at university. This paper uses findings from #the WritingSpace Project, an ongoing research project led by an interior architect and two academic writing specialists at MDXU, to address a specific facet of learning and learning support that impacts the hospitality and openness of university space. After briefly outlining the project, we explore our community’s perceptions of their writing processes and their relations to space, the relationship between shared university space and a feeling of “home” and writers’ suggestions for encouraging a sense of belonging. We conclude by questioning the need for one static space, and suggest that a series of diverse spaces that respond to a variety of needs are better suited to create a sense of “home” at the university.
Iterating DRAFT
People don’t have ideas - they make them 1
Iteration is the process of testing an... more Iterating DRAFT
People don’t have ideas - they make them 1
Iteration is the process of testing and developing ideas
through repetition, inquiry and reflection. This is the daily
practice that we experience both as learners and teachers
in attempting to produce an interlinked sequence of
outcomes. Each iteration is the starting point for the
following one. The process embeds components of
repetition, evolution, innovation and sometimes revolution.
This new issue of Draft is a new iteration, adding to the two
issues published together last year, one process[ing] and
two project[ing]. Draft Three is produced in a single volume
to consolidate the flow of ideas, connecting to past iterations
and looking forward to those of the future. This iteration has
a new format and a new graphic identity in line with our
strategy to refresh every year and to reflect the constantly
evolving teaching and learning landscape. Draft Three is a
summary of the diversity of activity experienced by our
students and academics throughout this year.
1. Carruthers, M. (1998), The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric and the Making of Images, 400–1200,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) p. 5.
Emerging Practices: Inquiry into the Developing. Shanghai:
Activism is a way of thinking and behave, to relate to the world outside. In a framework where pr... more Activism is a way of thinking and behave, to relate to the world outside. In a framework where products have turned into process, property into access and authorial terms into share-ability, to be active, to take part, is becoming a distinctive way of be in the world. Design, as a process in which the thinking is characterized by the capability to express empathy for the problem context, is able to generate innovative and collaborative insight and design solutions. Interior design, intended as the discipline able to build physical connection in between spaces people and objects, has deeply changed in the last decades occupying a fundamental role, moving fast towards new contents, new tools and different strategies focused on the contemporaneity. Accordingly to these issues education has the important task to continuously update tools and tactics to fit a fast moving societal context and to foster alternative visions of the future: reshape the traditional methodologies for new targets, engaging different players. Even if the discipline of economics does not acknowledge design, it can surely be one of the most influential drivers able to reshape and reinvent economic opportunities. If design intended as product or service is better perceived to have strategy potential, interior design still has to prove how can be a strong tool of transformation also in term of economic advantage. LA.BO. works is experimenting the possibility to work differently with the students of the Design Studio of the School of Design of the Politecnico di Milano. The aim of Small Business/Big Design was to achieve in two simultaneous goals: undertake a collaborative design action to spread design thinking and explore the possibility to communicate the economic value of the interior design strategies.
Project(ing) draft
When we decided to call the second issue of draft magazine Project(ing), we h... more Project(ing) draft
When we decided to call the second issue of draft magazine Project(ing), we had
in mind two different interpretations;
on the one hand, the title offers insights into the diverse projects emerging from our Interiors programmes, which range from the speculative and imaginative,
to the plausible and playful. On the other hand, it explores, through themes and visions, the multiple meanings associated with the suffix pro. To pro-ject is rooted in the Latin projectum, meaning to “throw forward” but to us is also linked to the meaning of pro as “in favour of”.
Our discipline of the Interior inherits existing spaces, and works with these: the site is the way in—we (literally and metaphorically) scratch the surface of the architecture in an attempt to understand the spaces and buildings we are confronted with; we look back in time to understand the genealogy of the site, to then project forward and revive it through re-use and adaptation. For us the user is also key, and thus ‘pro’ embodies thinking in favour of somebody else. This year we’ve been dealing with a multitude of different users in an attempt to produce new and better behaviours, ‘draft’ aims to capture the excitment inherent in the processes of designing these.
Process(ing) draft
If we are always in search of a theory to mediate between research and practic... more Process(ing) draft
If we are always in search of a theory to mediate between research and practice, process is our anchor—process as a sequence of interlinked actions that is iterative. During the design process we focus on how the subject of our speculation can manifest to others—the research of the forms, strategies, tactics and tools
of this communication is a strong and valuable part of our work. Sometimes
the process(ing) is a phase that enables a satisfactory design resolution but more often it constitutes a highly significant and independent package of meaning in its own right. Process legitimates outcomes and the narrative that it weaves enables a wide range of possible project(ing).
Here we present draft—a publication that even in name reveals our attitude toward process as the curation of the multifarious ways of working that we do, in an attempt to engage with what we broadly understand as interiors. The first issue is reflective and speculative, the thinking phase in preparation for the next issue project(ing) where these ideas will be framed, scaled and ready to graft
into context.
SITUATION Symposium and Exhibition Proceedings, July 31 to August 3, 2014 Editors: Suzie Attiwill and Philippa Murray Published in 2014 by Interior Design, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia, 2014 ISBN: 978-0-9808101-3-4 Format: Online Publication, 2014
Even if consume has not been included into the cycle of the daily function imagined by the Athens... more Even if consume has not been included into the cycle of the daily function imagined by the Athens Chart (inhabiting, working, recreation), historically, the places of commerce have been special ones where social, economic, and political needs, that have shaped the modern world, have been presented and put into action. In a commodity-related civilisation, the market's rules have become a central topic to relate to, and the practice of consumption a reading tool to discuss essential issues closely related to our daily life, such as on what, how and where we consume not only goods but experiences, events and culture. Contemporary retail spaces are complex places combining many aspects that go beyond the spatial and functional to include the physical, social, cultural and economic as well. All these shape their personalities and specific traits.
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publications//papers by Francesca Murialdo
A community engagement workshop was conducted, fousing of four key questions aimed at exploring significant issues in the area: "What makes Kilburn special?", "What is the vision of Kilburn?", "What can we do now?", and "What can we do in the future?". The workshop gathered valuable feedback from participants, which the students then utilized to inform the development of their projects and that will inform future events for Kilburn Lab
This project is a collaboration between academics from Lincoln’s School of Psychology, the Interiors programmes at University of Lincoln and Interior Architecture at Middlesex Univrsity, and the Academic Writing and Language team at Middlesex.
Developing a series of targeted and inter-disciplinary workshops to ensure that designers and educators are equipped with the knowledge they need to deliver presentations and discuss unconscious bias in representation as well as other relevant considerations when engaging in inclusive design. The workshops have promoted a discussion across education and industry of the impact that visualization has on the representation of future spaces and whom these spaces are addressed and designed for: a discourse about social sustainability of spatial design. We intend our workshops to help establish EDI as an integral part of the design process and enable participants to apply their own critically reflective knowledge and understanding of these principles to the development of their design.
A physical and pedagogical entity, the design studio embraces and fosters collaboration beyond its physical borders, however the move to online teaching and learning during the Covid-19 pandemic presented significant challenges to the delivery of architecture and design education, especially in terms of transposing the ‘studio’ environment – it’s ‘signature pedagogy’ - to a virtual alternative. Prompting a deep reflection on and rethinking of teaching and learning within this context, it is our contention that this experience deserves a new empirical framework able to challenge existing pedagogic practices that are fundamentally resistant to change.
Reviewing a year in the life of the BA (Hons) Interior Architecture programme at Middlesex University in London, we explore the use of digital platforms as an emergent spatial typology, investigating pedagogical engagement in a digitally networked learning environment. Articulating a future scenario where the design studio will exist as a mixed reality entity, we propose the “Augmented Studio”, as an emerging pedagogic landscape within which we prepare, shape, and equip teaching and learning moving forward. What precedents exist for this augmented environment? How might these inform the evolution of a new pedagogic framework for spatial design education and how might future pedagogy continue to be shaped by digital-era technologies?
functional character and increasingly come to represent symbolic and cultural contents. “Practice of Consumption and Spaces for Goods” has the aim to investigate contemporary retail spaces as complex places combining many aspects that go beyond the spatial and functional to include the physical, social,cultural, and economic.
Issue #4 of IE:Studio explores the range of interpretations that emerge from the investigation of these hidden, invisible and erased spaces. Today digital technologies provide us with pseudo surgical tools through which to record, document, extract and reproduce interiors that are threatened, hidden or concealed, but what tactics and tools can we adopt to take apart, read and interpret the multiple layers of memory and matter that are embedded within the fabric of the interior? What happens when we encounter content and data that poses ethical and political questions? And in the uncovering of such interiors are we aestheticising trauma rather than simply unpicking the truth? Can the increased scrutiny of what lies beneath the surface of the interior give spaces their own agency beyond human inhabitation?
This issue offers a diverse collection of essays and studio briefs that question and expose a range of positions in relation to lost and hidden interiors, and what happens when these spaces are restored to the public gaze, literally and/or metaphorically. The eleven papers included here are organised into three sections: Studio, Research and Practice, and have been curated under five headings: #negated, #forgotten, #concealed, #erased and #lost that identify different typologies of the hidden interior as well as varying strategies of engagement. The three different sections - Studio, Research, Practice – provide a useful framework for how Research and Practice in Interiors informs Studio briefs. The wide range of contributors including academics, researchers, students and practitioners together underline the collaborative nature of interiors as a discipline.
practice. We observe, decode the existing, anticipate what might be possible and then
construct new layers of meaning. Yet far from being just a material translation of our living
needs, interiors are guardians of stories, memories and relationships.
More often than not interiors, if not the architecture that frames them are altered, hidden,
closed off – they become invisible, subtracted from our vision and perception. In this paper
we are interested in these hidden and erased spaces, and the processes of disentanglement
that can assert the agency of the interior within an investigative practice.
Firstly we will establish the contexts for this discussion, setting out our theoretical position,
and introducing the metaphor of the palimpsest and the concept of the gaze to underpin our
approach. Further we will look at existing practices for documenting and interpreting hidden
and concealed spaces and events.
Then we will address the opportunities offered by digital technologies that can make visible
the complexity of interior environments, and enable us to imagine and explore new
configurations and future possibilities for these ‘lost’ spaces.
What happens when these spaces are mapped, coded and reviewed?
This article explores the relationship between the reality and the representation of interiors as offered by some online platforms, like Airbnb.
mediating the relationship with the past and its different layered meanings. The conceptual framework is built around the idea that the built environment is always time-specific; it is planned and realised according to specific needs in a specific timeframe. In this perspective,
every further adaptation is meant to keep the architecture updated to be suitable for the new timeframe: adaptive reuse is intended as a process that uses different tools and tactics to keep the buildings active.
Reused buildings merge the values of the original construction and of subsequent adaptations.
The evaluation of the adaptive reuse process relates to the capacity to add a new layer of sense to the existing significance and to the quality of reusability that the intervention achieves.
People don’t have ideas - they make them 1
Iteration is the process of testing and developing ideas
through repetition, inquiry and reflection. This is the daily
practice that we experience both as learners and teachers
in attempting to produce an interlinked sequence of
outcomes. Each iteration is the starting point for the
following one. The process embeds components of
repetition, evolution, innovation and sometimes revolution.
This new issue of Draft is a new iteration, adding to the two
issues published together last year, one process[ing] and
two project[ing]. Draft Three is produced in a single volume
to consolidate the flow of ideas, connecting to past iterations
and looking forward to those of the future. This iteration has
a new format and a new graphic identity in line with our
strategy to refresh every year and to reflect the constantly
evolving teaching and learning landscape. Draft Three is a
summary of the diversity of activity experienced by our
students and academics throughout this year.
1. Carruthers, M. (1998), The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric and the Making of Images, 400–1200,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) p. 5.
When we decided to call the second issue of draft magazine Project(ing), we had
in mind two different interpretations;
on the one hand, the title offers insights into the diverse projects emerging from our Interiors programmes, which range from the speculative and imaginative,
to the plausible and playful. On the other hand, it explores, through themes and visions, the multiple meanings associated with the suffix pro. To pro-ject is rooted in the Latin projectum, meaning to “throw forward” but to us is also linked to the meaning of pro as “in favour of”.
Our discipline of the Interior inherits existing spaces, and works with these: the site is the way in—we (literally and metaphorically) scratch the surface of the architecture in an attempt to understand the spaces and buildings we are confronted with; we look back in time to understand the genealogy of the site, to then project forward and revive it through re-use and adaptation. For us the user is also key, and thus ‘pro’ embodies thinking in favour of somebody else. This year we’ve been dealing with a multitude of different users in an attempt to produce new and better behaviours, ‘draft’ aims to capture the excitment inherent in the processes of designing these.
If we are always in search of a theory to mediate between research and practice, process is our anchor—process as a sequence of interlinked actions that is iterative. During the design process we focus on how the subject of our speculation can manifest to others—the research of the forms, strategies, tactics and tools
of this communication is a strong and valuable part of our work. Sometimes
the process(ing) is a phase that enables a satisfactory design resolution but more often it constitutes a highly significant and independent package of meaning in its own right. Process legitimates outcomes and the narrative that it weaves enables a wide range of possible project(ing).
Here we present draft—a publication that even in name reveals our attitude toward process as the curation of the multifarious ways of working that we do, in an attempt to engage with what we broadly understand as interiors. The first issue is reflective and speculative, the thinking phase in preparation for the next issue project(ing) where these ideas will be framed, scaled and ready to graft
into context.
A community engagement workshop was conducted, fousing of four key questions aimed at exploring significant issues in the area: "What makes Kilburn special?", "What is the vision of Kilburn?", "What can we do now?", and "What can we do in the future?". The workshop gathered valuable feedback from participants, which the students then utilized to inform the development of their projects and that will inform future events for Kilburn Lab
This project is a collaboration between academics from Lincoln’s School of Psychology, the Interiors programmes at University of Lincoln and Interior Architecture at Middlesex Univrsity, and the Academic Writing and Language team at Middlesex.
Developing a series of targeted and inter-disciplinary workshops to ensure that designers and educators are equipped with the knowledge they need to deliver presentations and discuss unconscious bias in representation as well as other relevant considerations when engaging in inclusive design. The workshops have promoted a discussion across education and industry of the impact that visualization has on the representation of future spaces and whom these spaces are addressed and designed for: a discourse about social sustainability of spatial design. We intend our workshops to help establish EDI as an integral part of the design process and enable participants to apply their own critically reflective knowledge and understanding of these principles to the development of their design.
A physical and pedagogical entity, the design studio embraces and fosters collaboration beyond its physical borders, however the move to online teaching and learning during the Covid-19 pandemic presented significant challenges to the delivery of architecture and design education, especially in terms of transposing the ‘studio’ environment – it’s ‘signature pedagogy’ - to a virtual alternative. Prompting a deep reflection on and rethinking of teaching and learning within this context, it is our contention that this experience deserves a new empirical framework able to challenge existing pedagogic practices that are fundamentally resistant to change.
Reviewing a year in the life of the BA (Hons) Interior Architecture programme at Middlesex University in London, we explore the use of digital platforms as an emergent spatial typology, investigating pedagogical engagement in a digitally networked learning environment. Articulating a future scenario where the design studio will exist as a mixed reality entity, we propose the “Augmented Studio”, as an emerging pedagogic landscape within which we prepare, shape, and equip teaching and learning moving forward. What precedents exist for this augmented environment? How might these inform the evolution of a new pedagogic framework for spatial design education and how might future pedagogy continue to be shaped by digital-era technologies?
functional character and increasingly come to represent symbolic and cultural contents. “Practice of Consumption and Spaces for Goods” has the aim to investigate contemporary retail spaces as complex places combining many aspects that go beyond the spatial and functional to include the physical, social,cultural, and economic.
Issue #4 of IE:Studio explores the range of interpretations that emerge from the investigation of these hidden, invisible and erased spaces. Today digital technologies provide us with pseudo surgical tools through which to record, document, extract and reproduce interiors that are threatened, hidden or concealed, but what tactics and tools can we adopt to take apart, read and interpret the multiple layers of memory and matter that are embedded within the fabric of the interior? What happens when we encounter content and data that poses ethical and political questions? And in the uncovering of such interiors are we aestheticising trauma rather than simply unpicking the truth? Can the increased scrutiny of what lies beneath the surface of the interior give spaces their own agency beyond human inhabitation?
This issue offers a diverse collection of essays and studio briefs that question and expose a range of positions in relation to lost and hidden interiors, and what happens when these spaces are restored to the public gaze, literally and/or metaphorically. The eleven papers included here are organised into three sections: Studio, Research and Practice, and have been curated under five headings: #negated, #forgotten, #concealed, #erased and #lost that identify different typologies of the hidden interior as well as varying strategies of engagement. The three different sections - Studio, Research, Practice – provide a useful framework for how Research and Practice in Interiors informs Studio briefs. The wide range of contributors including academics, researchers, students and practitioners together underline the collaborative nature of interiors as a discipline.
practice. We observe, decode the existing, anticipate what might be possible and then
construct new layers of meaning. Yet far from being just a material translation of our living
needs, interiors are guardians of stories, memories and relationships.
More often than not interiors, if not the architecture that frames them are altered, hidden,
closed off – they become invisible, subtracted from our vision and perception. In this paper
we are interested in these hidden and erased spaces, and the processes of disentanglement
that can assert the agency of the interior within an investigative practice.
Firstly we will establish the contexts for this discussion, setting out our theoretical position,
and introducing the metaphor of the palimpsest and the concept of the gaze to underpin our
approach. Further we will look at existing practices for documenting and interpreting hidden
and concealed spaces and events.
Then we will address the opportunities offered by digital technologies that can make visible
the complexity of interior environments, and enable us to imagine and explore new
configurations and future possibilities for these ‘lost’ spaces.
What happens when these spaces are mapped, coded and reviewed?
This article explores the relationship between the reality and the representation of interiors as offered by some online platforms, like Airbnb.
mediating the relationship with the past and its different layered meanings. The conceptual framework is built around the idea that the built environment is always time-specific; it is planned and realised according to specific needs in a specific timeframe. In this perspective,
every further adaptation is meant to keep the architecture updated to be suitable for the new timeframe: adaptive reuse is intended as a process that uses different tools and tactics to keep the buildings active.
Reused buildings merge the values of the original construction and of subsequent adaptations.
The evaluation of the adaptive reuse process relates to the capacity to add a new layer of sense to the existing significance and to the quality of reusability that the intervention achieves.
People don’t have ideas - they make them 1
Iteration is the process of testing and developing ideas
through repetition, inquiry and reflection. This is the daily
practice that we experience both as learners and teachers
in attempting to produce an interlinked sequence of
outcomes. Each iteration is the starting point for the
following one. The process embeds components of
repetition, evolution, innovation and sometimes revolution.
This new issue of Draft is a new iteration, adding to the two
issues published together last year, one process[ing] and
two project[ing]. Draft Three is produced in a single volume
to consolidate the flow of ideas, connecting to past iterations
and looking forward to those of the future. This iteration has
a new format and a new graphic identity in line with our
strategy to refresh every year and to reflect the constantly
evolving teaching and learning landscape. Draft Three is a
summary of the diversity of activity experienced by our
students and academics throughout this year.
1. Carruthers, M. (1998), The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric and the Making of Images, 400–1200,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) p. 5.
When we decided to call the second issue of draft magazine Project(ing), we had
in mind two different interpretations;
on the one hand, the title offers insights into the diverse projects emerging from our Interiors programmes, which range from the speculative and imaginative,
to the plausible and playful. On the other hand, it explores, through themes and visions, the multiple meanings associated with the suffix pro. To pro-ject is rooted in the Latin projectum, meaning to “throw forward” but to us is also linked to the meaning of pro as “in favour of”.
Our discipline of the Interior inherits existing spaces, and works with these: the site is the way in—we (literally and metaphorically) scratch the surface of the architecture in an attempt to understand the spaces and buildings we are confronted with; we look back in time to understand the genealogy of the site, to then project forward and revive it through re-use and adaptation. For us the user is also key, and thus ‘pro’ embodies thinking in favour of somebody else. This year we’ve been dealing with a multitude of different users in an attempt to produce new and better behaviours, ‘draft’ aims to capture the excitment inherent in the processes of designing these.
If we are always in search of a theory to mediate between research and practice, process is our anchor—process as a sequence of interlinked actions that is iterative. During the design process we focus on how the subject of our speculation can manifest to others—the research of the forms, strategies, tactics and tools
of this communication is a strong and valuable part of our work. Sometimes
the process(ing) is a phase that enables a satisfactory design resolution but more often it constitutes a highly significant and independent package of meaning in its own right. Process legitimates outcomes and the narrative that it weaves enables a wide range of possible project(ing).
Here we present draft—a publication that even in name reveals our attitude toward process as the curation of the multifarious ways of working that we do, in an attempt to engage with what we broadly understand as interiors. The first issue is reflective and speculative, the thinking phase in preparation for the next issue project(ing) where these ideas will be framed, scaled and ready to graft
into context.
3rd Industrial Revolution & The makers
PRODUCTION METHODS ARE CHANGED
>we are able produce goods in a different way (auto-production,
customization,...)
>different Economies of Scale (long tail,...)
DISTRIBUTION METHODS ARE CHANGED
>new channels
THE WAY WE CONSUME IS CHANGED
>different demand
>different target
>different products and services
THE WAY WE DESIGN HAS CHANGED
>new designer-enterpreneur
>cross typology workspaces (co-working,...)
In the Next Industrial
Revolution, Atoms Are the
New Bits *
digital culture, after the editorial world, music and videos, is
now transforming the world of atoms
*Anderson, 2010 in Wired
‘700 >> textile factories thanks to the steam engine
‘900 >> with Henry Ford it starts the mass production
Today>> from industrial to post industrial society where everybody is co-producer
REALE E VIRTUALE, bricks and bits
ATTRAVERSO QUALI CANALI E CON QUALI STRUMENTI IL PRODOTTO
AFFERMA LASUA IDENTITA' OFFLINE E ONLINE?
different actions: we share ideas, content and spaces in many ways: through social media, co-working and co-housing, or via physical instruments trought a money based economy (uber,
airbnb,..).
This shift in thinking creates the need to redefine the tactics for designing both public and private spaces, and the thresholds between which are increasingly fluid and porous. Further it makes
>>what we share
room for a collaborative model where people and communities
operate as co-authors and active participants within the design
process.
How will physical spaces be involved in the #sharing phenomena?
How will the design process support #sharing activities and ideas?
How do we interpret #sharing as a concept, an opportunity, a goal, a common ground, a realm between the public and the private?
Executive Master in Design Management
For Innovative Environments
April 2016
Arch. Francesca Murialdo – Course Project Manager
Cristina Foglia – Tutor
Assistants: Francesca Avian, Cristina Foglia, Luca Gadaleta, Cristina Zambonini
Professors: Giovanna Piccinno, Frank O’Sullivan, Francesca Murialdo, Alberto Perdomi
Assistants: Michela Fancello, Cristina Foglia, Luca Gadaleta
Internship: Cristina Zambonin
more info @ isdirtmatteroutofplace.tumblr.com/about
KilburnLab at Middlesex University is playing an active role in the One Kilburn initiative.
Exhibition open 1st - 30th June2023.
It demonstrates how skills and competences from the academic realm can impact positively on community engagement and a sense of belonging.
Kilburn Lab - a project led by Francesca Murialdo with Naomi House, Jason Scoot, Michael Westthorp, and Gareth Williams – comprises of a series of collaborative projects with local stakeholders to explore the future of the area.
As educators in Higher Education Institutions, we are involved in Teaching and Learning and Research activities and in what is defined as the 3rd mission – the commitment for higher education institutions to “contribute to society”.
This speech brings together some considerations, methodologies and practices that – from the discipline of interior design/architecture – expand to other fields to better respond to social changes.
I discuss the agency of spatial design as an interdisciplinary space able to mediate between different stakeholders – and propose a shared vision of the future world.
The paper challenges the idea that architecture's impact is solely in its physical changes, emphasizing how sites themselves can influence perceptions of identity.
Expanding on this foundation, the paper delves into innovative concepts that amplify the potential of existing structures and sites to yield social impact in terms of spatial production and collective memory, offering the community a platform for engaging with memories, collective thought, and future ideas, even if not directly tied to physical application.
In this context, the paper explores the concept of "collective Interiors," where architectural choices reflect community decisions rather than individual preferences. KilburnLab, a practice-based research project developed by the Interiors Programmes at Middlesex University in London, through collaboration with local stakeholders, has engaged the community in envisioning the future and repurposing abandoned community spaces.
Balancing the positive aspects of urban renewal with safeguards against gentrification is complex. This involves weighing the benefits of revitalization against the risks of displacement and cultural homogenization.
The paper is the account of a collaboration, a research project and a series of workshops conducted over the last few years by the University of Lincoln and Middlesex University London. Humans of Interiors/Diversity by Design aims at promoting a discussion across education and industry on the impact that visualization has on the representation of future spaces and whom these spaces are addressed and designed for: a discourse about social sustainability of spatial design. The research activities underpinning Humans of Interiors/Diversity by Design and the workshops devised internationally, help establish EDI as an integral part of the design process and enable participants to apply their own critically reflective knowledge and understanding of these principles to the development of their design.
Hornsey Town Hall, its past and present, has provided the framework through which to explore the possible use(s) and re-use(s) of this unique architectural and community asset.
The designers of year 2 have worked towards a programmme of spaces and inhabitations that facilitate education and practices of making. The interventions shown here have been designed to accommodate a new generation of makers that through a ‘FabLab’ (fabrication laboratory) typology, share know-how and experience, reconnecting the site with the community.
The designers of year 3 have taken on a complex brief that strategically develops new ideas and proposals for the building and its environs in 3 phases and over a timespan of 15-20 years. This process of the adaptive re-use and re-inhabitation of the site responds to the perceived needs and desires of the community in its widest sense – community as a polymorphous entity rather than a homogenous one.
The first two phases of the project have spoken to the idea of staging community, where the community is understood as a leading ‘actor’ in the reimagining of Hornsey Town Hall’s immediate future. In the third phase of the project we have focused on networking community with the understanding that the contemporary urban condition is physically located yet connected across space and time.
To explore this urban context we have invited designers from Politecnico di Milano to work inside/out on the external threshold of the building.
We are proud to present here an overview of these projects prompting you to interpret these propositions and provocations. Here is Hornsey Town Hall: today, tomorrow and in the future.
Milano.
Recent developments, that have been accelerated by the pandemic and the current economic crisis, show that in practice, services are becoming integral to retail and vice versa. The consumers’ needs and the dedication of retailers to serve these needs have sparked new approaches that unite both service and retail design. Whether it be online or offline (or both), for a product or a service or an experience, or all together… It is only natural that the research community support the development of this field through furthering insights. This colloquium focuses on bringing together various disciplines to contribute their related knowledge and insights with the objective of calibrating terms and meanings that strive for consensus across disciplines related to retail and service design. This is to work towards knowledge and practice-based contributions that strive for a more holistic and encompassing retail and service design future